Infectious Diseases along the Silk Roads

Prof. Dr. Heinz Mehlhorn has retired from Düsseldorf University and was President of the German and World Societies of Parasitology and Protozoology. He has published 80 parasitology books and is currently chairman of a German company, which has developed products against parasites.

Prof. Zhongdao Wu, PhD is an internationally well known Professor of human parasitology at the Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University, China. He is engaged in research projects on prevention and control of parasitic diseases such as snail-borne parasitic diseases as well as schistosomiasis, liver fluke, as well as mosquito-borne diseases. He has also participated in multiple international cooperation projects and thus visited countries such as Niger, Zanzibar, Nepal, Thailand, Pakistan, Laos, etc. to exchange ideas on parasitic disease prevention and control. As teacher he is engaged in the Medical school, where he also has trained many graduate students and doctors from the Belt and Road countries thus spreading important knowledge.

Dr. Xiaoying Wu has received her Ph.D. at the School of Public Health at the Sun Yat-sen University. She studied at the University of Birmingham (UK) and completed her postdoctoral work at the School of Public Health at Fudan University. Currently, she is employed at the Department of Gastroenterology at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University. Her primary research focus is on clinical epidemiology of chronic and infectious inflammatory diseases. Dr. Wu led a graduate research team conducting a three-year field epidemiological investigation in the schistosomiasis japonica endemic areas in China, and established a cohort of patients with advanced schistosomiasis japonica. She also participated in teaching the clinical eight-year program course "Tropical Diseases and Global Health". In addition Dr. Wu is a member of the Health Data and Digital Medicine Branch of the ChinaInternational Exchange and Promotive Association for Medical and Health Care.

Part 1: The Silk Roads: Past and Future.- Chapter 1: Network expansion and disease spread along the former and present straits of the Silk Road(s) and other international straits.- Chapter 2: Belt and Road Initiative Revisited.- Chapter 3: Economic Development and Health Care Status in Silk Road Countries.- Chapter 4: Traditional medicines along the BRI countries.- Part 2: Parasite and Disease Spread along the Silk Roads: A Review to date.- Chapter 5: Infectious diseases in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries.- Chapter 6: Disease details on plague (Black Death), cholera, brucellosis, and tick-borne encephalitis along the Silk Road(s) of former and recent times.- Chapter 7: Plague disease - from Asia to Europe and back along the Silk Road.- Chapter 8: Dengue along the silk road.- Chapter 9: Intestinal Parasites at the Xuanquanzhi relay station on the Silk Road 2,000 Years Ago.- Chapter 10: Dicrocoelium in Iran: From Bronze Age to the 21st century.- Chapter 11: Development of vaccines to stop endemic of hydatid diseases and promote connectivity of BRI.